What I really like about this book is the clear explanations of digital vs. analog. There is no right or wrong here as each has advantages and disadvantages. Just because you open a detector up and see surface mount solid state devices on the board does not mean it's digital. Most people think of analog as capacitors, resistors, and inductors. A detector is not trully digital until it takes the analog signals and converts them to digital words for use in a micro-processor program. At this point a programmers's program determines how the data is used and interpeted. Analog doesn't neccessary mean old and outdated. It just means that they are proccesing and handling signals without converting them to digital words for a processor. This done with transistors, op-amps, and comparators. A digital machine does this, but does so by handling the data in a program. With the analog, what you get is what you hear. In digital what you hear is based on the program. I am not knocking digital, I am just saying a good analog circuit is hard to beat. I work with digital and analog signals everyday as I design, build, troubleshoot, program, and test automation with PLC's and robots. I know both digital and analog have their place. In digital form it is much easier to manipulate data and use it. In most case to build the analog equivalent would be mind boggling. This why you don't see all them fancy features on an analog detector. In most cases the pots are just adjusting the gain of an op-amp or the level of a comparator.
In the Industrial world, I will take digital any day of the week, hands down. When it comes to detecting, I will take the analog. What the detector sees, is what I hear, not a digital interpetation. That's my opinion, others will disagree, and that's fine. In the end we will all use what works best for us.
